Danger: Seeing temptations as normal

I’ve had a realization about a way I’ve been reading the Bible all wrong.

I’m thoroughly enjoying Russell Moore’s latest book, Tempted and Tried, which is about the nature of temptation and how we find hope in Christ’s triumph over temptation (specifically in his time in the desert being solicited by Satan).

In a section of chapter two, Dr. Moore opens up James 1:13:

James of Jerusalem told his flock that they’d certainly face the sting of temptation and that they’d be tempted to blame it on God. “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,” James wrote, “for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one” (James 1:13). This probably doesn’t seem like a problem for you. Reader, I doubt you would ever say, “I just feel that God is entrapping me to leave for Acapoulco with a fake ID and my company’s retirement funds in small unmarked bills.”

But the danger is that we might see our temptations as a normal part of the fabric of the universe, as the way things are supposed to be. That’s true for both believers and unbelievers. We must recognize that “each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire” (James 1:14). The human story, after all, starts with a man who blames God (“the woman whom you gave to be with me,” Gen. 3:12) for the fact that he fell into his own twisted desires. (37-38, bolding mine)

This hit me square in the face. How often do I excuse my own temptations as just a part of the way the universe is? Which is to implicate God, because this is just the way he’s made things to be – for my struggle… What Dr. Moore is doing here is two things:

1. Helping us see that our desires are good and God given to be used and enjoyed how God designed them to be.
2. Temptations that seek to pervert those desires are not the way God designed the universe to be.

This is to say that God designed us with good desires to enjoy the world around us. But God did not create us to satisfy our desires by our own designs. For example, it’s natural to desire friendship. It’s natural to desire to love others and to live in loving fellowship with them. What’s unnatural and twisted (and kinda creepy) is how I pervert those desires to be about my sense of feeling accepted, turning other people into servants to my sinful cravings and desires of how I want to be loved and adored. Instead of using my desires for friendship as God intended to love and delight in other people, I treat other people as though they have to serve my idols of anxiety and finding identity in their praise. (And if you’ve been around this whirling planet enough, you’ll know that this endeavor never works, and never satisfies.)

Dr. Moore goes on:

We too often assume our current sinful status is what it means to be “real.” That’s because we’ve never known a world in which there is no sin. If you grow up all your life on a coastline near an uncapped oil spill, you might conclude that seagulls are covered in tar. As you read or travel, though, and see the birds in their natural state, you’ll discover your experience was abnormal; that’s not the way it’s meant to be. Too often we dismiss as ‘all too human” that is not human at all; it’s a satanic nature parasitically imposed on the human after the fall of Eden. (43-44)

What I began to see here is that those temptations I feel as so natural – from the craving to have acceptance with others, to the lustful look at a woman – is my way of blaming my sin on God. I think I’m far too often the type, as Dr. Moore points out, that thinks “blaming my temptations on God” is something people do who are in bed with their adulterous lover and they just “couldn’t help but follow their ‘soul mate’, this is God’s fault for sending love.” But I think James is aiming much closer to home.

Dr. Moore moves on to say this:

…[M]uch of what we include in “temptation” isn’t temptation at all. It’s beyond our good, created desires being appealed to. It’s instead those embryonic stages of sinful desire. (45)

I think the application here is simple:

Recognize where you and I are seeing temptations and sins as “normal” as anything but normal. The seagull isn’t supposed to be drenched in oil, no matter how long we’ve seen him like that. Our world and heart aren’t supposed to be drenched in temptation, no matter how long we’ve learned to live like they are.

Recognize that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). When we see that our desirse are twisted, we need to repent, and ask God to correct them to be the good gifts they were designed to be.

May God give us grace to do this.

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If you’re interested in Dr. Moore’s book, Tempted and Tried, I recommend you check it out here. You can also follow him on twitter. I’ll be writing a review about it in the days to come.